“You might not know this, but I’m doing the Super Bowl halftime show,” quipped Bad Bunny during his Saturday Night Live opening monologue in October. Few in the audience needed the smirking update. It had been less than a week since the Puerto Rican artist was announced as the headliner of the 2026 Super Bowl halftime show, and reactions were already widespread, loud and drastically divided.

Notably, none of the most extreme reactions seemed to have anything to do with Bad Bunny (born Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio) as an artist or performer. To the left, an endless string of columnists exulted him as a critic of President Donald Trump and an anti-MAGA crusader for immigrant rights whose performance would give the middle finger to his haters. To the right, heavyweight pundits lamented the

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